Thomas the Tank Engine, anthropomorphic locomotive engine who rides the rails of the fictional island of Sodor. Thomas the Tank Engine stars in the long-running television series Thomas & Friends.

Train outfitted as Thomas the Tank Engine, at the station in Alresford, Hampshire, Eng.

Pedro

While Thomas is only a small locomotive, he has big aspirations. In his ongoing quest to be a “Really Useful Engine”—the highest possible praise on the Sodor Railway—he often rashly attempts tasks and feats that would be better suited to larger engines. His rashness gets him into no end of trouble, but, with the help of his fellow engines and under the watchful eyes of railway manager Sir Topham Hatt, he always emerges safely from his adventures.

The character was created by Wilbert Vere Awdry in a series of children’s books based on stories he had told to his son, Christopher. The first of the series, The Three Railway Engines (1945), captured the imaginations of British children and created a vast audience for Thomas’s continuing adventures. Awdry wrote 25 more books about Thomas and his friends between 1945 and 1972, and his son continued the story in 1983. A television show called Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (later shortened to Thomas & Friends) debuted in the United Kingdom in 1984. Thomas’s adventures, which were animated using real models and stop-motion photography, were introduced to American television in 1989 as part of the PBS series Shining Time Station.

According to a 2001 survey by the National Autistic Society, autistic children have been proven to connect powerfully with Thomas. Experts have found, among other things, that the simple facial expressions of Thomas and his friends help children with autism spectrum disorders learn to understand displays of emotion.